The FSB detained a married couple on charges of treason

In the city of Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk region, the FSB detained a married couple on charges of treason, TASS reports.

As stated in the press release of the FSB, the man and woman, whose names have not been disclosed, “for a monetary reward, gave the special services of Ukraine information of a military and technical nature that can be used against the Russian armed forces.” It is confirmed that the spouses were connected with the enterprise of the defense-industrial complex in Nizhny Tagil and already “confessed to the transfer of drawings.”

Human rights activists note that the number of criminal cases brought under articles of espionage and treason has increased sharply in Russia recently. Only in March, the FSB detained a resident of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, accused him of trying to pass information on Ministry of Defense facilities to Ukrainian intelligence, a resident of Moscow on charges of helping the Ukrainian army, an 18-year-old student from Karelia on similar charges, and a journalist of the American newspaper Wall Street Journal – allegedly, on behalf of the United States, he was engaged in gathering information about one of the classified enterprises of the Russian military industry.

At the beginning of April, a court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Yevgeny Nikiforov, a resident of the Volgograd region, to six and a half years of strict regime prison in the case of high treason. According to the FSB, he allegedly planned to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And in Moscow, a woman was arrested on charges of espionage, only her name is known – Oksana Fyodorova. There is no other information about the criminal case or about the person of the accused. The materials of the investigation are classified, and the trial was held behind closed doors due to Fedorova’s restraining order.

At the end of February, Vladimir Putin, speaking at a meeting of the board of the FSB, called on the special service to more actively “stop the activities of those who try to split and weaken Russian society”, and also “uses separatism, nationalism, neo-Nazism and xenophobia as weapons”.